Station Crew Prepares for Arrivals, Does Science and Maintenance

The International Space Station’s Expedition 24 crew continued to make preparations Wednesday for the arrival of three additional crew members. Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson also worked with a variety of maintenance and science activities.

Skvortsov and Kornienko performed tests on the automated Kurs docking system as they prepare for the arrival of the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft and three more flight engineers, astronauts Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, on June 17.

Expedition 24 Flight Engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson works in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

Skvortsov and Kornienko also continued outfitting the Rassvet Mini-Research Module installed by the STS-132 shuttle crew in May and worked with the Russian URAGAN experiment that monitors and photographs areas on Earth where natural and man-made disasters are forecasted. The target for Wednesday was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, Caldwell Dyson worked to change out a faulty pump in the Oxygen Generation System in an effort to bring it back into service. She also performed routine microbial surface and air sampling in various areas of the station.

The engines of the docked ISS Progress 37 cargo craft were fired twice Monday night for a total of 17 minutes, completing a trio of reboosts that began Friday. These maneuvers optimize the station’s docking opportunities with the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft and the ISS Progress 38 spacecraft several weeks later. The station is now orbiting at an altitude of 221.5 x 218 statute miles.